Blue uniforms—they have replaced white clothes for many. The perfect camouflage for clandestine confederate agendas. They take oaths to protect, yet police our neighborhoods only to execute. To them, black communities across this country are capitols of crime and homes to beasts and “super-predators”. All cops are certainly not the enemy, but 300 plus years of systemic xenophobia has corrupted their ability to see us as more than 3/5 human.
As fractions of man, only fractions of the law are bestowed upon us. They fight for second the right to bear arms in the wake of massive terror attacks – yet silence ensues when man without a criminal record, pulled over for a broken tail light while legally carrying a registered firearm is shot dead, only after attempting to comply with law enforcement.
And do not be fooled by those who pander for our votes today and forget our struggle tomorrow. They will use the trending rhetoric behind our strife as fuel for their political ambitions—only to follow through with persistent inaction. We don’t need another rehearsed speech before a televised, over-crowded political rally. Love, without question, trumps hate, but let’s not forget the era that supplemented pop-culture’s dictionary with the term “super-predators”. The same era responsible for a bill in ’94 that lead to mass incarceration rates of black men with life-sentences for non-violent crimes. The same era that enacted the Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking Bill – the beginning of a series of laws that deregulated the financial industry. Is that juxtaposition not shocking?? Low-level drug users buried by the full weight of state power, while banks simultaneously felt the freedom of shackles removed.
What are we to do with all of this? March? Repost?? Hashtag??? I honestly don’t have an answer. But be not confused– the struggle is ours to resurrect. No party, no single leader, no one man will champion our community’s inequities unless WE do. We have to religiously study this system– designed to permanently relegate black and brown men and women to second class lives and then elect individuals at the national AND LOCAL level on the sole basis that they make our business, their business. Individuals that give our issues a real seat at the table, speak directly and frankly to our concerns, and provide real, tangible solutions to be proposed as law. Never allow any candidate or party to believe they have our community’s vote in their back pocket or that we won’t show up to the polls in the same numbers just because a black man is not on the ticket. People only respect what they’ve earned— and if we so freely hand over our support or by contrast have a diminishing presence, nothing will change.
Just be prepared– it only gets worse before it gets better.
By Sefanit Befekadu
IG/Twitter: @sefanitbefekadu
